Welcome! As a coach, I wanted to share information about my basketball interests. The reason for choosing "Massey Basketball" is to make sure people understand this is not an official blog of Galesburg HS. The blog is designed to provide information about the Streaks and basketball, motivation, and anything that interests me.

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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Value of a Mentor

This is a great story of an older player mentoring a younger player. It shows not only the maturity of the mentor but the maturity of the younger player to recognize the need for mentoring. Humility is a huge part of learning.

Montee Ball's 'low-key mentor'By Adam RittenbergESPN.com

Ron
Dayne has been quick to offer advice to Montee Ball, who's been eager to receive
it.

MADISON, Wis. -- Montee
Ball stood on the sideline Sept. 22 at Camp Randall Stadium, his eyes cast
down, his helmet taken away from him, his day finished before halftime.

The Wisconsin running back suffered a concussion on a touchdown run against
UTEP, his second head injury in less than two months. Wisconsin had launched a
Heisman Trophy campaign for its senior star before the season began, complete
with the tagline, "This fall belongs to Ball."

Four weeks into the season, it had been anything but. Wisconsin's offense had
stumbled out of the gate and Ball, a Heisman finalist in 2011, literally had
nowhere to run.

Midway through the second quarter, a familiar figure wearing red approached
Ball and sat down next to him on the Badgers' bench.

"He was telling me, 'This happens,'" Ball recalled. "'You just have to make
sure you shake it off and come back and practice harder, and do a good job the
next game.'

"He's always been there for me."

It was on the same bench in 2009 when Ball first met the man he now calls his
"low-key mentor."

A
concussion sidelined Montee Ball during Wisconsin's win over UTEP, his second
head injury in a span of less than two
months.

"Someone was patting me on the shoulder," Ball said. "I turn around and it
was Ron Dayne. I was shocked."

Ball has had a strong support system during his college career. In addition
to coaches, teammates and friends, his parents, Montee Sr. and Melissa, left
their home in Wentzville, Mo., and moved to Sun Prairie, Wis., to be close to
their son.

Yet none of them knows what it's like to be a Wisconsin superstar running
back living both in the national spotlight and in the Madison fishbowl. Only one
person in Ball's life can truly relate, and that's Dayne, who starred at
Wisconsin from 1996-99.

"Any time we get young guys that come in who are in big roles, I love talking
to them," Dayne said. "With Montee, he got to go to all the awards [shows] I've
been to. My phone's open. I'll call him, check on him, see how he's doing.

"Whatever questions he shoots at me, I'll probably have answers for him."

Dayne won the Heisman Trophy in 1999, helped the Badgers to Big Ten titles in
1998 and 1999 and set the NCAA's all-time rushing record with 7,125 yards. He
has lived near Madison since finishing his NFL career in 2007, and he's a
regular presence at Badgers games and practices, counseling other Wisconsin
backs like former Badgers P.J. Hill and John Clay.

He formed a unique connection with Ball, who has sought Dayne's advice
throughout his career, even sometimes on the sideline during games. During a
record-setting 2011 season, Ball came to expect text messages from Dayne after
every contest.

"It's the perfect person you want to talk to in the situation I'm in because
I'm in the same shoes he was," Ball said. "Why wouldn't you listen to him? The
man did it all in college, and went to the league. That's my dream, so I'm most
definitely going to listen to what he has to say."

Dayne never force-feeds advice on Wisconsin players, cognizant that some
don't want to listen to "an old guy." But if they seek him out, he's there.

Former
Wisconsin great Ron Dayne knows a little about being a record-setting running
back in Madison.

"He's the first [running back] who has been like, 'Yo, I really need to talk
to you,'" Dayne said of Ball. "He's a good guy. He's a quiet guy. He doesn't
brag. He doesn't talk trash. He's just a good football player, a good teammate.
There isn't too much you can tell him that he doesn't know.

"And if he needs me, I'm here."

Ball is still hoping to have a long talk with Dayne about what happened the
night of Aug. 1. While walking home, Ball was attacked by a group of men, who
began punching and kicking him. Ball suffered a concussion and was briefly
hospitalized.

Police say the attack on Ball might have been precipitated by an earlier
fight involving Badgers football players. Three Wisconsin students have been
charged in the attack.

"I remember that morning when Montee was attacked, I got a text from Ronnie,"
Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema said. "It must have been before 9 in the morning,
as soon as he heard about it. So I know he genuinely cared."

Dayne was also concerned about how such an attack could have happened.

"We never even had walk-ons get jumped, let alone our star player," he said.
"There'd be times somebody started fighting and guys would stand up in front of
me or hold me back."

Dayne didn't go out much during his final years at Wisconsin, cognizant of
the attention he'd draw. He didn't attend the annual Mifflin Street Block Party
-- an event at which this spring Ball, along with hundreds of others, received a
citation for trespassing -- until he was in the NFL.

For Dayne, life in Madison was football, study hall, spending time with his
young daughter and relaxing with teammates. When Dayne did venture out, he
always went with a large group.

"I just thought it was too much," he said. "I was able to drink, so it wasn't
like I was sneaking around. But I would go in somewhere, and everybody was
watching what I'm doing. I always had people around me to say, 'You're getting
too drunk,' or 'You're getting too mean.' Whenever I'd be with my guys and
they'd be like, 'We're going home,' I'd be like, 'OK, no problem.'"

Wisconsin tight ends coach Eddie Faulkner, a former Badgers running back, was
part of Dayne's crew in the late 1990s. Faulkner remembers Dayne being "larger
than life," particularly during the 1998 and 1999 seasons, but the spotlight
back then was different.

Ball
broke Dayne's Big Ten record for career rushing touchdowns during a 247-yard
performance against Purdue.

"You didn't have Facebook and Twitter and all this, so there's more attention
and more pressure on Montee than what Ron went through," said Faulkner, who
remains close friends with Dayne and is the godfather of one of Dayne's sons.
"Some of it, Montee has managed to figure out himself, but I know Ron is a great
sounding board. Ron's going to give him good advice. Ron likes to see people
succeed."

The days after the attack saw Ball take to Twitter to defend himself against
a TMZ report that he had been involved in the earlier fight. The concussion kept
Ball off of the field for the first two weeks of fall camp.

He struggled in non-league play, at least according to his standards,
averaging 90 yards per game and 3.9 yards per carry. After tying Barry Sanders'
NCAA single-season record with 39 touchdowns in 2011, he reached the end zone
just three times in his first four games.

Before leaving the UTEP game with the concussion, he had lost the first
fumble of his career -- on his 656th carry. Although he scored three times in
the Big Ten opener against Nebraska, Wisconsin squandered a lead in the second
half and lost. Ball fell off the Heisman radar and was labeled by some as a
major disappointment.

He acknowledged that his balance, cutting and timing were off after the lack
of practice time in August.

"I was kind of down on myself," Ball said. "I really looked at myself in the
mirror and told myself, 'This is just adversity striking. This is a test for me,
and I've got to come out of it. I've got to overcome it, and it will make me a
better person.' Looking back on that, I believe it did."

Ball has turned his season around in the past three games. After a strong
fourth-quarter performance against Illinois, he rushed for a career-high 247
yards, including a whopping 194 yards after contact, and three touchdowns in
Wisconsin's blowout win against Purdue. Ball's third touchdown broke the Big Ten
record of 71 held by Dayne.

Ball needs five more touchdowns -- of any kind -- to break Travis Prentice's
NCAA record of 78.

"He [Dayne] sent me a tweet congratulating me, and I made sure to contact him
back," Ball said. "Like I told him, records are meant to be broken, and soon
mine will be broken. But Ron is most definitely not forgotten."

Despite the slow start, Ball ranks 12th nationally in rushing (122.8 ypg) and
needs just 18 yards for his second straight 1,000-yard season. He's averaging
155.5 rush yards through four Big Ten games with 10 touchdowns.

Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema is confident
Ball will continue getting stronger as the season
progresses.

Off the field, Ball's life is quiet.

"It's a difficult situation to be a 21-year-old, a 22-year-old and keep
yourself in a shell," he said. "I most definitely have learned I live my life in
a fishbowl, and it's something I have to deal with."

Ball, whose practice habits are legendary, continues to push himself. Several
weeks ago he started participating in 6 a.m. weightlifting sessions with
Wisconsin's development crew, a group of younger players who conduct more
frequent and intense lifting sessions than others. Bielema isn't counting out
Ball for another Heisman run, noting that many of Ball's best performances in
2011 came in the second half of the season.

"Whenever he's had some adversity, he comes back stronger," Bielema said.
"I'll just reference what the NFL scouts have been telling me. They've been
blown away by what they see in practice, what they've seen on film the last
couple weeks. He's a very, very good football player who's getting
stronger."

There are other records likely to fall for Ball, but he's more concerned
about helping Wisconsin win another Big Ten title and get back to the Rose Bowl
for the third straight year. The Badgers have won three straight and are in the
driver's seat to represent the Leaders Division on Dec. 1 in Indianapolis.

"You don't see him being selfish," Dayne said. "You've never heard him saying
anything like, 'I'm the best running back, I did this or that.' He's just like,
'This is our team.'"

Ball still hopes to have that long talk with Dayne, perhaps next week when
Wisconsin has a bye week. The senior wants to "go out with a bang." Not
surprisingly, there's no better example than Dayne, who ended his career with
200 rushing yards and a touchdown in the Rose Bowl against Stanford, earning his
second consecutive bowl MVP honor.

"He realizes his days here at Wisconsin are numbered," Bielema said. "There's
no more decisions after this year. He's on to the next level, and he's going to
leave behind here a legacy that goes way beyond records on the football
field."

1 comment:

The NBA is a big, bad, cruel world. Ir simply doesn’t care whether you’re a top dog in high school, in college, wherever. And it certainly doesn’t give a damn whether you can pull off a 1,080-degree dunk (although that will look good on SportsCenter)